1999 Results: First-Time Candidates Brett, Yount and Fisk Are Now All-Time Hall of Merit Inductees!
In his first year of eligibility, Kansas City Royal great George Brett picked up an outstanding 99% of all possible points. Every voter placed him an elect-me spot.
Shortstop/center field MVP Robin Yount captured a terrific 91% of all possible points as a newbie this election.
Legendary backstop Carlton Fisk, another new candidate, also scored a more than impressive 91% of all possible points.
Though strikeout king Nolan Ryan missed this election in his ballot debut with his strong 73% of all possible points, he will certainly go in with a high point total in 2000.
Rounding out the top-ten were: Willie Randolph, Rollie Fingers, Cannonball Dick Redding, Bucky Walters, Pete Browning and Dave Stieb (first time in the top-ten!).
Thanks to OCF and Ron Wargo for helping to make sure that the tally is correct.
RK LY Player PTS Bal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
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1 n/e George Brett 1143 48 41 5 2
2 n/e Robin Yount 1045 48 2 28 10 7 1
3 n/e Carlton Fisk 1042 48 4 13 24 7
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4 n/e Nolan Ryan 845 47 1 2 10 28 1 1 4
5 5 Willie Randolph 237 21 1 4 5 2 3 1 1 2 2
6 8 Rollie Fingers 210 18 1 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1
7 4 Cannonball Dick Redding 205 17 5 2 1 2 1 1 2 3
8 7 Bucky Walters 199 16 4 1 2 3 4 1 1
9 6 Pete Browning 193 15 4 2 2 1 3 1 1 1
10 15 Dave Stieb 191 16 2 2 3 2 1 2 2 2
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11 13 Charley Jones 186 14 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 1
12 11 Hugh Duffy 185 16 1 3 1 3 1 1 1 2 2 1
13 10 Bob Johnson 184 16 1 4 4 1 3 2 1
14 9 Roger Bresnahan 175 15 1 2 1 2 5 1 1 1 1
15 14 Tony Perez 159 12 1 3 2 2 1 2 1
16 12 Gavvy Cravath 154 15 2 1 3 1 3 4 1
17 16 Alejandro Oms 141 13 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1
18 17 Tommy Leach 135 12 4 3 1 2 1 1
19 18 George Van Haltren 134 11 2 3 1 1 2 2
20 21 Mickey Welch 114 10 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1
21 23 Graig Nettles 103 11 1 1 1 1 2 2 3
22 28 Bus Clarkson 102 9 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
23 20 Burleigh Grimes 96 8 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
24 30 Rusty Staub 94 9 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1
25 22 Lou Brock 93 8 1 1 1 2 1 2
26 27 Vic Willis 90 9 2 1 2 2 2
27 34 Tommy Bridges 90 7 1 1 1 2 1 1
28 26 Larry Doyle 89 7 2 2 1 1 1
29 24 Phil Rizzuto 88 9 1 2 1 1 1 1 2
30 19 Ken Singleton 84 9 1 1 1 1 2 3
31 36 Luis Tiant 81 7 1 1 1 1 2 1
32 25 Norm Cash 79 7 1 1 1 1 2 1
33 29 Reggie Smith 78 8 1 3 1 1 2
34 37T Elston Howard 73 7 1 2 2 1 1
35 41 Tommy John 72 7 1 2 1 1 2
36 35 Bob Elliott 71 8 1 2 1 1 1 2
37 32 Dizzy Dean 70 6 1 1 1 1 1 1
38T 31 Bobby Bonds 69 7 1 1 2 1 2
38T n/e Dale Murphy 69 7 2 2 1 2
40 33 John McGraw 69 5 3 1 1
41 37T Orlando Cepeda 62 6 1 1 1 1 1 1
42 40 Vern Stephens 57 6 1 1 1 2 1
43 39 Ben Taylor 51 6 1 1 1 3
44 n/e Frank Tanana 50 4 1 2 1
45 48 Addie Joss 49 4 1 1 1 1
46 44 Dave Bancroft 47 5 1 1 1 1 1
47 42 Pie Traynor 44 3 1 1 1
48 51 Wally Schang 42 4 1 1 1 1
49 49 Dave Concepción 41 4 2 1 1
50 52 Ed Williamson 40 3 2 1
51 43 Carl Mays 38 3 2 1
52 57T Don Newcombe 36 4 1 2 1
53T 45 Sal Bando 35 4 1 1 1 1
53T 57T Urban Shocker 35 4 1 1 1 1
55 59 Wilbur Cooper 33 3 1 1 1
56 46 Chuck Klein 32 2 2
57 60T Rick Reuschel 31 3 1 1 1
58T 60T Frank Chance 30 3 1 1 1
58T 50 Bill Monroe 30 3 2 1
60T 47 Jack Clark 29 3 1 1 1
60T 64 Rabbit Maranville 29 3 1 1 1
62 56 Sam Rice 28 3 1 2
63 54T Buddy Bell 27 3 1 1 1
64 53 Frank Howard 24 3 1 1 1
65T 68 Luis Aparicio 24 2 1 1
65T 65 Fred Dunlap 24 2 1 1
65T 66 Ernie Lombardi 24 2 1 1
68 62 George J. Burns 23 3 1 1 1
69 85 Jim Kaat 22 2 2
70T 69T Jimmy Ryan 21 2 1 1
70T 69T Leroy Matlock 21 2 1 1
70T 69T Al Rosen 21 2 1 1
73T 54T Jim Rice 20 2 1 1
73T 76 Tony Mullane 20 2 2
75 63 Thurman Munson 19 2 1 1
76 83T Dizzy Trout 18 2 1 1
77 75 Bruce Sutter 17 2 1 1
78 74 Luke Easter 16 1 1
79T 79T Ed Cicotte 15 1 1
79T 79T Tony Oliva 15 1 1
79T 79T Jack Quinn 15 1 1
82 82 Carlos Morán 14 1 1
83T 67 Ron Cey 13 2 1 1
83T 78 Dave Parker 13 2 1 1
85T 83T Brian Downing 13 1 1
85T 73 Lefty Gomez 13 1 1
87 87T Sam Leever 12 1 1
88 89 Hack Wilson 10 1 1
89T 87T Fielder Jones 9 1 1
89T 90 Tony Lazzeri 9 1 1
91T 91 George Kell 7 1 1
91T n/e Dutch Leonard 7 1 1
93T n/e Jim Fregosi 6 1 1
93T 92T Bill Madlock 6 1 1
93T 72 Bobby Veach 6 1 1
93T 92T Mickey Vernon 6 1 1
Dropped Out: Wally Berger(94T), Cesar Cedeno(96), Bill Mazeroski(94T), Al Oliver(86), Gene Tenace(77).
Ballots Cast: 48
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NL Awards
AL/AA Awards
(Third-league Awards as needed/wanted)
All-MLB Awards
That way we accomplish the twin goals of creating meaningful awards for each league and then also creating a meaningful discussion of who the actual best-players were in all of baseball. Both of these goals add to the important question: What makes a HOMer?
Yes, of course Negro leaguers are included. Marc (and Joe and John and Eric), don't you remember the MMP project that we discussed last year?
Since Joe seems to prefer other future directions for our group, I will email a copy of the proposal to anyone who wants it. Here's the introduction I wrote for it:
Something Else Better: The Hall of Merit MMP Project
Our current HoM project is on course to reach the present day next fall. I feel privileged to be associated with such a high quality group of people, not only in the level of research and analysis conducted, but especially in the level of discourse. It would be great to keep it together. With this in mind, my thoughts have been towards, “What next?”
I have put together the framework for another multi-year project, tentatively called The Hall of Merit MMP project. Voting would begin sometime in 2008. I recently submitted this proposal to several HoMers for comments prior to going public, and it has generally been well received.
A few things to initially be aware of/think about:
1. Rather than MVP, in the HoMer vein, we’ve taken to the term MMP, Most Meritorious Player (thanks Dr. Chaleeko!).
2. Is there anyone here who has a keen interest in running the project day-to-day, as John Murphy is currently doing with the HoM? If so, raise your hand.
3. What should be the starting year for the project? The article says begin with 2007. For various reasons, it has been suggested we start with 2006 or 1960 or 1946 or some other intermediate year.
This thread is primarily for discussing and debating the structure for this project, so comments on any aspect of the proposal are welcome. Or if you’re not too keen on this idea, it can also be used for presenting alternative proposals of “something else better.”
You included me, DanG, and maybe I drove others away. BTW, the baseball volume drove me away; I am so far behind on that account, it is now bouncing (quota). The SABR-listed eddress accepts mail.
Over the past couple years I’ve presented versions of this idea to several people. I think we should determine the best players from each season, 1871 to the present. This article outlines my proposal for this project. With six months to go in our current project, the time seems ripe for presenting it to our group
The basic idea is for each voter to rank the top 25 players in MLB (includes NeL) for each season. The results will give us many useful items: 1) The #1 player for each year; 2) The true MVP’s for each league; 3) The top players at each position; 4) A compilation of true MVP award shares for everyone; 5) A method for measuring player’s peak/prime value. Actually, if we had done this first, it would have made the HoM itself an easier project.
Similar to the germination of the HoM over five years ago, there are the rules and other issues to be worked out. Here are my thoughts:
1) Starting Point – I don’t think we should start at 1871 and go forward. Let’s start with the season last completed (2007) and work backwards. The idea is to start with the easier years and work up to the complications we will face later on.
2) Ballot Explanations – Required. A basic tenet of the HoM is, the unexplained ballot is not worth casting. We can be a bit lax with established voters, but new voters are absolutely required to have good reasoning for each player on their ballot.
But if we're just gonna do it, we need to do it, and Dan's proposal is better than just talking it to death, so let's do it.
As I understand the other hurdle (along with the specific rules) is the need for a day to day guy such as John M. for the HoM. DanG, can you not do it? John M., would you do it?
Let's go forward, there's been enough sideways.
I don't think I could do it justice, like John is currently.
Part 2 of the MMP Proposal:
3) Criteria – Value to your MLB team(s) in that season only. If part of the season was spent outside MLB, that value should be considered as well, so long as most of his value was accrued in MLB (or top Negro leagues).
4) In other words, no consideration for players spending the bulk of the year in the minor leagues or Japan. There may be gray areas here regarding identification of certain leagues as “minor”: the AL in 1900, certain Negro leagues, the IA in the years around 1880, maybe the PCL for a time, the Mexican league in the 1940’s, maybe others.
5) Negro Leaguers – Yes. We will have to determine at what point Black ball ceased to be MLB caliber. We may have to allow for great players on barnstorming teams. Maybe credit for winter league play, but that’s a gray area, for sure.
6) War Credit – None. Ditto for injury credit. “Value in that season,” no what-ifs. The one exception might be for collusion credit, a la Raines in 1987.
7) Post Season Play – Should it be included in our evaluations? I’m inclined to say yes, with a caution that it should not be a major factor.
8) Frequency of Elections – I recommend weekly. Biweekly elections would make the project 5.5 year long. We’re looking at 140 elections, or about 33 months of weekly elections. If weekly, each week, there will be a new discussion thread, a new voting thread, and a new results thread.
9) The discussion thread should be standardized at the top, with leader lists of important data (both sabermetric and traditional), results of polls, all-star listings, etc. Or at least links to important data for that year. The discussion thread for a year should be posted at least a month before the voting thread.
10) Players Per Ballot – I advocate a 25-man ballot (a “team”, if you will). Of course, the more we list, the better ranking we get of the year’s best players, but going higher than 25 could be too cumbersome.
11) Points Tally – How about 30-29-28…6? Or should we give a bonus for a first place vote? How about 36-34-32-30-28-26-24-23…6?
That's the fun part of an overall MMP. I want to consider Gavy Cravath or Charlie Keller in the PCL. Considering Sadaharu Oh in Japan would be interesting also.
One thing about this project, you can't just add a couple guys to the consideration set every year and stick mainly with the same ballot. You need to completely rebuild your consideration set yearly. Ditto with discussions, you can't just look up discussions that happened previously to get a good sense of a player's value. Past discussion for the most part no longer matter. That doesn't lend itself to 2 week cycles. Three week cycles might be fine for 2007-1960 but I think monthly elections are more appropriate as we get into the integration era.
Another key difference will be the discussion of the ballot results. Right now "mistakes" are generally not fiercely debated because there is a sense that they can be rectified later. That won't be possible in this project.
Ah, but it will!
Part 4 of the MMP Proposal:
12) Dynamic Voting Results – Here’s the part that makes this project worthwhile and enduring. I think we should allow for voters to change their ballot after the original voting week. IOW, there will be two tallies of voting results: the Original Results will reflect the voters’ conclusions at the point of the election; the Ongoing or Dynamic Results will reflect the most recent analysis. Remember, this is much harder than HoM voting, where you simply plug in a couple newbies each year; here it’s a brand new assessment each election. There are other reasons for doing this: 1) There are more players and less time to assess your ballot than in the HoM project; 2) We need voters to learn about and integrate Negro leaguers into their ballot. Some voters will need more than a couple weeks to make good assessments here; 3) New voters can join the project at any time without missing any elections; regular voters can catch up if they miss an election.
Here’s how to do it: 1) Like the HoM now, everyone has a week to post a ballot on the year’s Ballot Thread, with results posted Monday night. 2) The Original Results will be posted in the results thread and remain there permanently; 3) Also posted in the results thread will be the Ongoing Results. 4) Voters can revise their ballot at any time; also, new voters can post ballots for any past elections. These changes will be reflected in the Ongoing Results. 5) Voters must renew their ballot for each election at least annually, by posting on the results thread a revised ballot or a statement that their last ballot stands. A chart on the results thread will list the date of each voter’s most recent ballot revision (or affirmation of no revision). 6) A ballot that is not renewed within a year will be deleted from the Ongoing Results for that election, eliminating most outdated analysis. 7) If our group consensus is against leaving the project open ended, we could begin closing down the Ongoing Results tallies at some point.
In most years, the Original Results will be very similar to the Ongoing Results. However, in general, I believe that further discussion and analysis will make the Ongoing Results a better ranking than the initial balloting. It gives us the best of both worlds: the results of the initial focus in the Original Results, along with the results of new discoveries and the latest analysis in the Ongoing Results.
So would I. But. Whose gonna do the MLE's? We'd probably need MLE's for at least 50 minor leaguers each season to get a reliable handle on it.
Really? Just scan a thread weekly and update it. Takes a minute, right?
Why?
That's called the Original Results here.
This is the Ongoing Results. An entirely new election is unnecessary.
No, I'm "retiring" after our current HoM project ends in a few months (I can stay on for the annual election, of course). I'm looking forward to hand off the burden to someone else.
(I would ####-can the Ongoing Results. They would confuse the hell out of me and would be an open invitation to strategic voting. OK, no more nitpicking starting now ;-)
Not necessarily. The rules for the HoM were hashed out through the usual Delphi method (before we knew the term!) for more than a year (real time). If we can get a thread started where we can begin this process, it would be a big help. As long as we know by December whether there is enough interest to go forward with the MMP Project, those most interested will be with us.
The MMP is a bigger project than our current one. If we can't get the team together to bring it along, it may be that it needs to be scaled down from how it's currently envisioned, or abandoned altogether.
If y'all wanna do something small, I run (and participate in) little projects all the time at Baseball-Fever. Search for The 500-Player Pyramid, an exercise in stratification I ran a couple years back? Or the VC Candidate 64-Player Tournament from about four years ago. Or we could rerun the HOF voting from 1936 under rational rules.
Why do you conclude this?
>Why do you conclude this?
You have to ask? ;-)
> 5 & 6 are a lot of bureaucratic overhead.
Really? Just scan a thread weekly and update it. Takes a minute, right?
I agree with DanG that most of the overhead is elsewhere. Some of it is daunting.
--
If y'all wanna do something small, I run (and participate in) little projects all the time at Baseball-Fever. Search for The 500-Player Pyramid, an exercise in stratification I ran a couple years back? Or the VC Candidate 64-Player Tournament from about four years ago. Or we could rerun the HOF voting from 1936 under rational rules.
Have you anything with Ongoing Results, even with a small number of participants?
The other thing is that by going backwards, we'll hit the PED issue head-on almost immediately. Do we want to do that? Will we make rules about how to look at PEDs/not look at PEDs? How would they be enforced? This issue is, in some ways, more directly applicable to MMP than to HOM since in a specific season the differences in player performance that may or may not be conferred by PEDs could actually be the difference between two players' performance. If we go WW2-2007 then 1871-WW2, we have the benefit of working out the kinks long before the PEDs become an issue.
Also, to Dan's point, a 25 deep ballot means that we will already be selecting an AL and an NL MVP and Cy Young winners, etc., all with one handy ballot. I think that works.
No, the concept of ongoing results is a utopian theory, perhaps unworkable in reality. Let's forget that part and move on.
I never thought I'd say this: Exactly, karl!
Right. If our only objective is to identify #1, it's not terribly interesting or enlightening. By doing a top 25 we'll identify not only the best in each league, but the best at each position (for the most part). We'll identify years (and periods) where a position was strong and years it wasn't.
I don't see PED's as an issue whatsoever. MLB has not wiped any records off the books or revoked any pennants or forfeited any games over PED's. Every PED-induced win is as valid as any other. This is besides the point we have little idea who was or wasn't a user.
Really? Someone voting the top 25 by Win Shares alone (and someone will) might not have any pitchers on their ballots at all in a number of seasons during the 5-man rotation era.
I doubt it, Jim.
Anybody out there that resembles that description?
I know who it's not
If we can get a thread started where we can begin this process, it would be a big help. As long as we know by December whether there is enough interest to go forward with the MMP Project, those most interested will be with us.
We have a thread on what to do after we catch up.
personaly I think we should (besides having a secret panal to induct Traynor into the induction(if the HoF could do it with the undeserving how about us continuing to improve on there work and doing it with the deserving))
is to have a managers wing
my problem with the MVP idea is since every ballot is diffrent it would be a lot harder to find time for it. Also a 25 man ballot would be extremly strainig on everyone if we do decide to persue the MVP we should probly do it with 5 players (no more then 10) per ballot to make it eiser I doubt it would make a differance in the end result. and have 4 seprate ballots AL-NL-NNL-total (each with 5 votes)
correction
we have little idea who wasn't a user.
The Jason Giambi flap will likely cause this issue to come to a head in 2001-2003 (which, IIRC, is the period he admitted to in some fashion, at some point, see NYT article yesterday about Selig wanting to pressure Giambi to appear before Mitchell).
It actually doesn't matter if it's the MMP or a non-MMP player. If we know he's doping, we'll need to have some way of looking at it. I disagree that it's the same as the Anson issue, that's another thing. Nor again Rose. I see it as more like Jackson/Cicotte in this sense: there is a body of evidence comprised of public admission (Giambi, Canseco, [and Caminitti? I can't remember now]) and publicized positives (the rest of those we know about, for isntance Raffy Palmeiro's 2006 positive).
In these specific cases, what do we do? Ignoring the issue is an option, I agree, and I don't cast it aside. Allowing each voter to vote their conscience is not the same thing as choosing to ignore it, but it's another option. A third is to constitutionally legislate something. I don't know what it is, but it could be a minimum or maximum performance penalty for dopers, it could be a disqualification, it could be that those adding an identified doper to their ballot must add a 26th candidate, it could be a lot of things. Given our current imperfect information on doping, it seems wise to tread carefully and ask a lot of questions.
This last point is exactly why I recommend that we go WW2-2007, then 1871-WW2. This gives the doping story some more time to sort itself out before we have to encounter it head on.
Right on, Marc. Obviously, it didn't matter. At the same time, we would have to legislate it; what is obvious to us is not to all. IOW, there would be voters who would penalize Caminiti, out of their personal sense of outrage or something. We would have to specify that that sort of "analysis" is outside the scope of the project.
Yeah, there could be a madcap voter or three who would do this. We deal with that in the current project, but they have no impact because the electorate is large enough to drown out the idiosyncrasies. I expect that would still be the case.
I think this would be a wise step. Legislating _something_ on this issue would be better than not at all. That way if someone doesn't like it, they can skip the PED years and come back earlier/later, or they can hold their nose, or they can just not participate at all. Keeping it undefined leaves too much room for intraelectorate squabbling or even squabbling with lurkers, of the sort that might generally be counterproductive.
The latest proposal I made last October in the Once We Catch Up thread has this:
New Voter Registration/Final Discussion thread posted: 2nd Monday in October (8th-14th). This will be October 13, 2008.
Voting thread posted: two weeks later (October 22nd-28th). This will be October 27, 2008.
Results posted: two weeks later (November 5th-11th). This will be November 10th, 2008.
my problem with the MVP idea is since every ballot is diffrent it would be a lot harder to find time for it. Also a 25 man ballot would be extremly strainig on everyone
I agree twice.
El C
This last point is exactly why I recommend that we go WW2-2007,
1947-1956 is the period where Retrosheet will be publishing new data in the next few years, presumably working backward from 1956 insofar as possible (1954 is available now).
It all depends on the pace you want to go. Weekly elections gets us done in about 2 yrs, 9 mos. Biweekly would take about 5 yrs, 6 mos. Triweekly would take about 8 yrs, 4 mos. Monthly elections would take us about 12 yrs, 6 mos to get through baseball history.
This is why I suggest at least a month for discussion for each year before the ballot week. Yes, that means five years being discussed at the same time. (Or three if we choose the biweekly-vote option.) That's OK, since we won't need individual player threads. Some years will be harder to get a good line on, some will be pretty straightforward to rank the top guys. Maybe some years you'll throw up your hands and take a pass; that's OK too. But I think if you look at a year and play it around in your mind and spreadsheets for a month, you'll have a good idea who the best guys are.
Not for the faint of heart! Obviously, the top half of your ballot is the most important to get right; you'd be nuts to agonize over the bottom few placements. But, no matter how big a ballot we have it will take effort to get it right. We all do the best we can, you can strain a little or you can strain a lot; it's up to you. I think that once you have a systematic appproach in place, getting a quick line on a year won't be too hard.
I think we need to go pretty deep, at least to 20, on our ballots. This is meant to inform the HoM elections. In an average season there are about 30 HoMers playing, so we want results that give us a decent idea of who is over the HoMer Line.
The main trick would be figuring out whether to have a "UT" slot for Banks, Carew, Rose, Molitor, etc - or put some or all in a particular position, etc.
Once that's done, you have 15-20 guys for most slots, and it's just a matter of ranking them a la a typical "yearly" ballot. Except I'd have people rate all the candidates at each slot (a little daunting only for SPs, unless we don't differentiate OFs).
That's certainly a project we could do. Similarly, we could rank players by decade. Or in each era. Or for each team. How about defense only rankings? The list goes on...
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